Meaningful resistance to latter day fascism doesn't have to be a march, a rally, or some other public protest.
It could be simply tearing off a Neo-Nazi sticker.
At first, Melinda and I didn’t understand the act of resistance.
We had boarded an S Bahn (light rail) train in Berlin and happened to sit behind some young German men, all with buzz cuts and dressed in black.
One wore a New York Yankees baseball cap, headwear popular in Europe. “Los Angeles” was printed on the back of another guy’s tee shirt.
“Deutsche Voran” was stenciled on the back of a jacket of one of the men who was carrying a furled black flag. In English, Deutsche Voran means “Germany forward” or “Germany ahead.”
We guessed “Deutsche Voran” was a soccer team or maybe a rock group.
But as we approached the Alexanderplatz station, we saw dozens of police officers in riot gear.
Only when the men got off the train did we suspect that they probably belonged to a far right or neo-Nazi group and were bound for a rally.
Our suspicions were confirmed after Melinda Googled “Deutsche Voran” and discovered that “Deutsche Jugend Voran” was a far-right/neo-Nazi organization.
We thought of anti-Nazi Germans in the 1930s – especially Jews – who had to ride in trains, trams, and other public transport with Hitler’s bullying Brownshirt thugs, each wearing a swastika armband.
It is illegal to display swastikas in Germany today, so neo-Nazi groups use other symbols, one of which apparently was on the sticker.
After the neo-Nazis detrained, a young woman, man, and two children boarded. We took them for a family.
No sooner did the woman sit down than she stood back up, crossed the aisle where some of the neo-Nazis had been sitting, and yanked off the sticker one of them had left on a metal panel below the window.
She triumphantly wadded up the sticker and apparently put it in her pocket.
Having thwarted the neo-Nazis' attempt to spread their hatred, she dispatched one of the children, a boy who seemed to be about 7 or 8, to patrol the train car for more stickers.
Despite his diligent search, he found no more.
The woman's act proved that you don't have march or rally to resist latter-day fascism or its variants – including MAGA cultists.
The rally the neo-Nazi Germans attended made the news in Berlin. So did counter protesters who reportedly significantly outnumbered the neo-Nazis.
I don't know if anybody else on the car saw the woman destroy the sticker. She could have ignored it, but she chose to resist hate. We will never forget her.
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